Get set for a superlative eclipse. On Sunday night, September 27 in the Americas (early Monday morning for Europe and Africa) the Full Moon will slide into Earth’s shadow in total eclipse. This is no ordinary Full Moon. It’s the Harvest Moon, the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox. It also happens to reach perigee — […]

Boeing has officially and publicly rejected a bid by Aerojet-Rocketdyne to buy rocket maker United Launch Alliance (ULA), which the firm co-owns with rival aerospace giant Lockheed-Martin. Furthermore Boeing affirmed support for ULA’s new next generation Vulcan rocket now under development, a spokesperson confirmed to Universe Today. Aerojet-Rocketdyne, which supplies critical rocket engines powering ULA’s […]

Video caption: ‘The Martian’ Star Matt Damon Discusses NASA’s Journey to Mars. Credit: NASA The excitement is building for the worldwide movie premiere of ‘The Martian’ on Oct. 2. Based on the bestselling book by Andy Weir, ‘The Martian’ tells the story of how NASA astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is accidentally stranded […]

36 years ago today, a strange event was detected over the Southern Indian Ocean that remains controversial. On September 22nd, 1979, an American Vela Hotel satellite detected an atmospheric explosion over the southern Indian Ocean near the Prince Edward Islands. The event occurred at 00:53 Universal Time on the pre-dawn nighttime side of the Earth. […]

See a Glowing ‘Honey Moon’ and Unique Star Trails in New Night Sky Timelapse

The “stars” of a new 3-minute timelapse are some very unique star trails and a glowing fireball that is actually a giant ‘honey moon‘ — the full Moon in June. Gavin Heffernan from Sunchaser Pictures and Harun Mehmedinovic from Bloodhoney.com teamed up for this video, filming in gorgeous mountain locations in the Southwestern US, showcasing […]

Video caption: This animation of LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) images begins with a low-altitude look at the informally named Norgay Montes, flies northward over the boundary between informally named Sputnik Planum and Cthulhu Regio, turns, and drifts slowly east above Pluto’s heart shaped Tombaugh Regio feature. It then rises about 10 times higher in […]

Exoplanet Beta Pic b orbiting Beta Pictoris from Dunlap Institute on Vimeo. Just. Wow. The motion of an alien world, reduced to a looping .gif. We truly live in an amazing age. A joint press release out of the Gemini Observatory and the University of Toronto demonstrates a stunning first: a sequence of direct images […]

China aims to land a science probe and research rover on the far side of the Moon by 2020, say Chinese officials. Chinese scientists plan to carry out the highly complex lunar landing mission using a near identical back up to the nations highly successful Chang’e-3 rover and lander – which touched down in December […]

Sunday Night: Getting Ready For a ‘Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon Total Lunar Eclipse’

So, heard the one about this weekend’s impending ‘Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon eclipse?’ Yeah, us too. Have no fear; fortunately for humanity, the total lunar eclipse transpiring on Sunday night/Monday morning is a harbinger of nothing more than a fine celestial spectacle, clear skies willing.(...)Read the rest of Sunday Night: Getting Ready For a ‘Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon Total Lunar Eclipse’ (1,417 […]

NASA is using a 150-year-old photographic technique with a few 21st century tweaks to capture unique and stunning images of the shockwaves created by supersonic aircraft. Called schlieren imagery, the technique can be used to visualize supersonic airflow with full-scale aircraft in flight. Usually, this can only be done in wind tunnels using scale models, […]